With all the driving I have been undertaking with car of late the condition of the rear tyres had started to get to the point where they needed to be replaced as the tread was quite worn. Not a huge issue but you could certainly notice the loss of traction in the wet in certain circumstances. Given the relentless ‘dampness’ here of late, replacing them was becoming more of a priority, especially with some upcoming trips I have planned.

The excuse to get the tyres changed arose recently when I was out on a run early one morning. While driving through temperatures close enough to zero degrees Celsius the car seemed to lack power and was crackling and popping out of the tail pipes somewhat. Luckily, once clear of the fog the car returned to normal performance.

Without hesitation I contacted Sal from Racing Red and he felt that it was that the fuel filters needed replacing. Given we had no record of them ever being changed he recommended they be replaced. Here was just the excuse I needed to get the car checked over, get a new set of rear tyres as well as a few other niggly problems resolved.

As you can see, there are two fuel filters for a 2.7 Motronic F355 like mine, located towards the front of the engine (i.e. near the belts and the seats).

The old part number is 186922 and the new one is 152212.

They aren’t very expensive so it makes sense to have them changed.

Apart from the tyres (the same ones as I got previously) I also had the follow items completed:

– Inserted the repaired ashtray after breaking the replacement. This is a whole post on its own but what I managed to get done was to run two metal reinforcing strips down either side of the length of the original ashtray to ensure has much greater strength and should now never span again! More on that coming soon.

– Air conditioning seemed a bit weak but checked fine.

– Hissing sound coming from rear of engine on cool down a while back. Most likely cause was venting from fuel tank. Probably due to ambient heat.

– Exhaust bypass valve wasn’t working because, as it turns out, there was a split in one of the tubes running from vacuum tank at the rear.

This prevented the tank holding a vacuum. Thus, there was no vacuum to open the bypass valve when required. Easily fixed.

Picked up the car the following week and drove it home through city traffic, in the wet. This was almost as much fun as driving to Racing Red in city traffic, in the rain with somewhat less grip and older rear tyres a week earlier! At least I have significantly more traction now.

Gotta say that the car feel stronger and a little more powerful, maybe because the exhaust bypass valve is working or it may simply be my imagination playing games to justify the repairs? Who knows? Who cares? All I know is the car ‘feels’ better and that is all that matters.

I am now ready for more winter adventures which I’ll update you on soon.